


this winter clarity

by waldowest



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldowest/pseuds/waldowest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tries to tell himself that he asked for this. I begged to come along, he repeats again and again as one finger after the other begins to unstick from the frozen cliff before him. He can feel the wind threading its long, tired hands through his hair, a gentle beckoning to the abyss below, and it almost seems peaceful, like he could fall for thousands of miles and land in the comfort of his own bed, with his favorite quilt tucked to his chin. But as he slips, as that final finger gives way and the beat of his heart chokes against his ribs, the tune changes. With every second that passes, the hand grips his hair tighter, nails slicing into his scalp until his body lurches from the pain. He falls faster and faster as it pulls, until a laugh is drawn from the last breaths wedged in the back of his lungs. The fastest kid in the West, falling to the fastest death. It's funny, he thinks, then his back collides with something solid and proud. After that, he doesn't think at all.</p>
<p>(A Wild West AU that focuses on Wally and Artemis, with all the other characters making appearances. Will generally follow the events of the show.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My intention is for this to be a multi-chapter fic, starting when the "gang" gets together and ending around the time of Wally's trip into the speedforce (which will obviously be tweaked for this au). I have a few chapters almost ready to go, but I wanted to post this little prologue before I got too far ahead. This is the first super AU thing that I've ever done and the first fic that I'm publishing in a longgggg time (besides the one I wrote with Brella), so I am hella nervous and self-conscious and excited at the same time. Hopefully you all enjoy this teaser and the rest that follows!!!

The season changes as he sleeps.

In his dreams, a thousand new colors of sunlight fade into winter before they reach the Earth, before he has a chance to hold them in his palms and anchor them with names. He tries anyways, to claim them, hands grasping at the saturated wisps of light in front of his eyes, but they dance across wavelengths and evaporate at the heat radiating off the tips of his fingers. A whimper slips past his outstretched fingers as his body lifts from the bed in a shudder, floating higher and higher through the ceiling until the clouds mist his eyelashes. It’s colder up there – a deep, colorless hum that shoves a fist into his lungs and curls the other hand around his throat.

Something groans in the distance, the ghost of a monster howling at the blinking stars, but Wally doesn’t flinch at the fear that presses up into his throat and screams like wildfire down his spine. He laughs. The cackle of thunder drawing closer bubbles in his chest until lightning cracks over the top of his head, and he _laughs_.

He wakes to darkness, his eyes gouged out of his skull and the sockets filled with dirt. His last, vibrant sense drowns in pine and sun-dried tar from the creature rotting beneath his bones, but at the settling of his fingers in the empty pit of his stomach, the stench suddenly has red hair and green eyes with freckles that used to spell constellations over the arch of his back. Another flash of lightning illuminates the wooden boards pressing at his sides, churning the panels until they part in response and beads of dirt slip through the cracks to dust his pale, clammy skin.

The deep rumble that follows lingers in the space between his ears before the dirt traps the echo like cement, thick and unbreakable even as his heartbeat pounds against his skull. His voice cracks as it fights the avalanche threatening to swallow him whole, his fingers scratching and clawing at their bounds until they splinter like the wood clouding his eyes - because that terror is finally starting to rattle his bones – but the shackles of earth clamped around his wrists won’t budge at the effort.

Wally can feel the swell of pressure building behind his eyes, but the dirt is salty and wet when it cascades down his cheeks. Thunder cracks once again in the sky above, and finally, finally, he swallows the universe whole to bellow a shriek in response.

He wakes again to the still beating summer sun dripping down the back of his neck like glue – an off-pitch tune that sticks to his ribs when he sheds the quilts curled around his legs. It clogs his arteries and strangles his lungs, but at least the heat is hollow to the touch, unlike the gritty and decaying dirt he can still taste on his raw tongue.

He can move, he can breathe, feel freedom at the tips of his fingers instead of decomposing wooden planks.

The Earth still sits on the proper axis; summer still waits outside of his bedroom walls.

But on the horizon, a fierce and booming winter slinks just out of view, unleashing a furious hiss that only he seems to hear.

Wally isn’t sure he’s ready.


	2. the summer sings with snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still feeling my way through this fic writing deal, so we'll see how this goes. I'm not really sure how long each chapter should be/is expected to be/everyone wants to be and idk. Rough going, homies. Anyways, just the start of it all here, please let me know what you think!

Wally feels life return to normal as he sweats out the last of his frozen screams and drops his toes to the hardwood floor at the side of his bed. He’s grounded again, with air in his lungs and speed beneath his feet - the sound of a sizzling pan slipping underneath his door and his throat growling in response. It brings a grin to his lips, the strength back to his shaking legs.

“Ma, wha--” he trips with one foot poking out from his jumper and the other snaking through as he hurriedly tries to locate the rest of his clothes around the room, “Is that bacon?” The only response is his own frustrated grunt when he drops to the floor and reaches for the boot under the center of his bed.

“Ma, can you h--”

The sound of another voice tickles his ear, gentle and familiar like the caress of an autumn breeze against his freckled cheek, but it takes more than a moment for him to place the sound. The tone is higher, lighter almost. It sounds free as it floats in through his open window, unconstrained by the badge usually pinned to its broad chest.

Wally yelps at the realization.

“Uncle Barry!”

He nearly trips again as he stumbles towards the door with one boot dangling from his teeth and the other facing the wrong side of his toes. Months, he thinks it’s been. The last time that blue-eyed ghost had danced through town there had been a dusting of snow on his shoulders and a bright pink shine that jumped off his skin like the good news that rolled off his tongue.

A _baby_ , he had gushed through the tears slipping from the corners of his eyes.

Wally’s heart is hammering so proudly in his chest that he spares only the bat of an eyelash towards the stove as he rushes past with both boots finally, firmly, on his feet. The salt all blends together anyways - from the pan, from the laughter, from the tears that he can hear sticking to his uncle’s throat. They’re easy to see, too, streaking down his dirt-stained and blistered cheeks to lift the weight still gripping the edges of Wally’s ribs. It’s gone, spinning away into the abyss of his gut, as soon as the kid bursts through the front door and sees his mother squeezing his uncle around the waist in a tight hug, his father with one of the younger man’s palm clutched in both of his own.

Congratulations stick to the air like molasses, but Wally cuts through with a single bound and snakes his way through the tangled web of arms to drop his hands on the taller man’s shoulders. “So what is it? Boy or girl?”

“How about one of each?” Barry grins at the look of shock that drapes over his nephew’s eyes and shrouds the mischievous glint that had been etched into his brows not a second before.

“Twins, can you believe it?”

“T-two babies?”

The palm ruffling Wally’s hair is the only anchor that keeps his head from twisting off at the neck and bouncing on the red earth beneath their boots. His shoulders sink anyways, pressed by a wrestling confusion and joy that echo in his ears with every blow.

“And they’re... they’re both...”

He can’t draw the words with his tongue, but then again, he doesn’t have to. Barry nods even as his nephew’s voice cracks, the grin stretching wider across his own lips and a shine creeping back to his already bright and dancing blue eyes. “Perfect. They’re both perfect.”

Wally loses a part of himself in that moment - it drops from the bottom of his gut and falls to the ground before he realizes that his stomach has gone hollow. Everything seems to stop. His mother freezes with her hand holding a laugh against her lips. His father has his arms crossed and a corner of his mustache drawn up to his cheekbone. The pure ecstasy and joy seeping from every pore in his uncle’s face is tattooed to the back of Wally’s skull, branded to his heart so he can remember it when the moment is gone and the winter clouds roll back over the plains.

The three of them paint a pretty picture, a happier one than any had seen in a long time.

The seasons have been getting stronger, stranger with each passing year. A rancher down the road, a dozen miles from their front porch, claimed that one of his cows had birthed a chicken with no feathers and the tail of a serpent.

No one had believed him, of course, not when he made the claim or when he produced the rattling end of a snake as his proof, but Wally had always thought, somewhere in the back of his imagination, that the man was speaking the truth.

Things were getting stranger. He could feel it even without the strange and suffocating dreams that pulled a fog down over his eyes. 

But in _that_ moment, the image frozen in front of him was more powerful than any fear that toed county boundaries or chuckled on the back end of thunderstorms in the evening sky. Maybe it’d be alright.

 

\----

 

_As fortune would have it, Wally isn’t the only one that hears the drums beating in the distance. A man streaks through Keystone a few hours later, wearing nothing but a fur coat, snakeskin boots, and the threat of winter on the tip of his tongue._

__Cold_ , he screams, _it’s so cold_._

_His voice cracks the ice he presses beneath his feet and his shoulders shake under the warmth of his jacket, but he skirts through the town with his heels on fire, throwing caution and care to the wind that licks his flame._

_Cold_.

 

\----

 

“Papa, _please_.”

Rudy West clucks his tongue at the soup dribbling down his son’s chin and shakes his head for the third time in the same space. “Wally, we’ve been through this a thousand times. You’re--”

“--too young to be away for that long, I _know_.” His fingers fiddle with the hard piece of bread clinging to the side of his bowl, but he huffs so loudly that there’s no air left in his lungs to lift it. “I’m thirteen now. I’m not a baby anymore.” There’s an itch to run, to follow his uncle home even without the blessing of his father, but as his eyes flick to the window and pasture beyond it, the cause is lifted from his shoulders with much stronger, more capable hands.

“Kid has a point, Rudy.” 

His father opens his mouth to respond, with a crease stitching his brows together and his arms closing the space over his chest, but Barry cuts him off before the words slip from his tongue.

“Frankly, I think your sister might string me up if I don’t return to Keystone with some help. We’re gonna need all we can get.”

“I can do that!!” Wally yelps, letting another spoonful of pea soup gush down his chin as he shoves his chair backwards and slams his palms onto the table. “Papa, I can _help_.” 

The wood vibrates under his hands, ringing in all corners of the room before it settles in his father’s ears. It’s hard to ignore the pull, magnetic as it pulses and sways through the floor after passing from his toes. Even the oldest man in the room, blinded by a deep and consuming need to protect his only child, can see the shine connecting each freckle on those pink cheeks. 

Eventually he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with rough, calloused fingers, and relents.


End file.
